I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ghost, so I don’t have any real ghost stories… but I once saw something I couldn’t explain, so maybe it was a ghost or something else paranormal. One night when it got dark I started seeing smoke and screamed because I thought the house was on fire… but no one else could see it, and it was gone by the next day.

~Pixie
http://pageturners-underthecover.blogspot.com/

My story (which probably isn’t very creepy unless you experience it yourself):
I tend to stay up late into the night while the rest of my family goes to sleep. One particular weekend, I turned off the lights at around 2am so my mother wouldn’t know I was still up on the computer. A few minutes later, I heard murmurs coming from my sister’s room, which is right next to mine.

I ignored them at first, thinking I was just imagining things. But after a couple of minutes, they became impossible to ignore because they got louder. I couldn’t hear the exact words, but there was clearly something being said. I figured that my sister had left her window open (which faces the front of the house) and that the neighbors were outside, having a good laugh with friends or something. But then I realized it was way too late for them to be out there.

My next thought was that my sister had probably had a nightmare and run to my mother, who would have accompanied my sister back to bed and calmed her down until she fell asleep again. (Nevermind that I would have heard my mother coming down the hall and into my sister’s room.) I did my best to convince myself that this was probably what was going on, but I became increasingly creeped out, especially in the dark, alone.

The murmurs continued for a good five minutes, until they stopped by themselves. I waited a couple of minutes to see if they would start again. They didn’t. I got out of bed quietly and peeked into my sister’s room to prove to myself that she and my mom were the ones talking (it had kind of sounded like their voices).

My sister was deeply asleep, alone. Her window was closed, so it couldn’t have been the neighbors’ voices I heard. The TV was off. So was her iPod. (I went through every possible explanation.)

I scurried back to my bed and hid beneath the safety of the covers, but sleep didn’t come easy after that.

I just finished reading All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn.

Travis and his sister Corey are mischief-makers spending the summer at their grandmother’s inn in Vermont. It’s a quiet, pleasant place – with a haunted history. In an effort to drum up more business (and entertain themselves) the siblings plan their best prank yet: they decide to impersonate ghosts and “haunt” the inn. Their performances are so convincing they draw the attention of ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts, much to their grandmother’s dismay.

But they attract more than attention when the real ghosts wake up, and suddenly their prank isn’t as funny. In order to quiet the ghosts and bring order back to the inn, Corey and Travis must learn the history of the inn and bring justice to the lovely bad ones who suffered so long ago.

This is a spooky, fast-paced ghost story with a charming blend of eccentric characters, sibling antics, and shocking history. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I wondered why the story was told from Travis’s point of view. His voice was not always convincing, but the plot swept me along so swiftly I didn’t really mind. And Hahn does a fantastic job of conveying that eerie sense of being watched from the shadows… :)

And I linked here about Trick or Treat 2009:
http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2009/10/thisese-weeks-in-ya-october-10and-17.html

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to get an awesome treat! :)

-Erika